


The Price of Peace

by waywardelle



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bottom!Sam, M/M, Season/Series 11, reuniting relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-15
Updated: 2015-10-15
Packaged: 2018-04-26 12:07:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5004226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waywardelle/pseuds/waywardelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of "Form and Void," Sam and Dean take one night to rest before the real work begins. <i>"Remember when I gave you purpose, and you gave me a home?"</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Price of Peace

**Author's Note:**

> Coda to 11x02, "Form and Void." Spoilers for that episode, and all of Supernatural, really. This is what my brain does when it sees two tired, scared brothers come home after a couple of really shitty days. I know, it's my cross to bear. (Enjoy the gratuitous hurt/comfort and nonsensical bed sharing. And stuff.)

“How’s Cas?”

Sam smiles as Dean pads into the library, old man slippers and dead guy robe hanging off his exhausted brother. There’s a crystal glass with amber liquid clenched in one hand, and the other is massaging his forehead, like he’s got an apocalyptic headache coming on. Sam knows the feeling.

“Asleep,” he answers, shutting his laptop. It’s late, almost 2Am. They split up tasks earlier, knowing that if they wanted to get to bed anytime soon (he can hardly believe the last time he slept in his bed, Dean had the Mark and the Darkness wasn’t even on his radar), they needed to divide and conquer. 

Sam had taken Cas, and Dean (despite his comments about a maid) grabbed a trash bag and a couple carriers from a storage room and started trying to reorganize their legacy. “It’s my mess,” Dean had said gruffly, looking blankly at the pile of books. “You’ve cleaned up enough of my crap. Go on.”

Sam’s sure Dean had the best of intentions, but faced with an exhausted, bleeding, cursed angel? He’d take the books any day. Still, Cas was their friend, and he was like this because of his dogged loyalty to their mission. Whatever that was these days. Cas remembered how to shower from being a human, so Sam thankfully didn’t have to sponge-bathe him, especially since he kept growling, then looking contrite about it. It was throwing Sam off. After he patched Cas up, armed in an old t-shirt and a pair of Sam’s sweatpants, he rolled onto his stomach on top of Sam’s mattress and went still. Sam had been alarmed at first, but--

“Angels aren’t supposed to sleep,” Dean points out, his rubber-soled slippers making pat-pat-pat noises against the wood floor. He settles in the seat next to Sam, but pushes away the mountain of research in front of him. In the two hours or so it took Dean to clean the library enough for tonight, Sam had gone down to the basement to look for the file on the Darkness. There was a lot of conjecture and rumor, and it was in the end useless. 

He should add the cure for… whatever that was, the black veins, in his notes, but he wants to play this one close to the chest for now. Dean can’t happen across it, because no doubt he’ll want to waste precious time babying Sam when they don’t have time for rest. Now that Sam knows there’s a cure, he’s gotta find some way to--

“Sam?” It’s soft, the gruffness coating Dean’s tone for the past 48 gone. “You with me?” Dean reaches out, his fingers opening in question. But then he seems to think better of it, and the hand Sam swears Dean almost put on his thigh clenches into a fist, and then drops. 

“Do we even know that Cas is an angel anymore?” Sam says finally, picking up the thread to their conversation, determined to act like he didn’t notice Dean’s falter. “I mean, do we even know we’re human?”

Dean’s eyes narrow, and he sucks in his cheeks slightly in that contemplative way that makes him look dangerous and fierce and beautiful. Sam looks away, starts to get up, go to bed. He’s gotta crash in one of the spare rooms tonight, and suddenly he’s just too fucking tired for whatever conversation is on the tip of Dean’s tongue. He’s not supposed to be looking at Dean like this anymore; he’s not supposed to think of him as beautiful. He’s not supposed to hope Dean slips up and touches him with that brand of tenderness he got used to, that he started to love, need every day. That tenderness with the edge that says you’re here because you’re mine, and you’re mine because you’re here. 

He shouldn’t miss it, and sometimes he doesn’t, but most of the time, he aches down to his bones for it. Without talking about it, they decided it was too much; it was causing their already poor judgment to become completely eclipsed. They haven’t talked about it since Sam came back after Gadreel, when Sam opened one of Dean’s deepest veins and just let him bleed. He regrets it, letting anger make such a big decision for them. 

They haven’t touched since before the third trial, and those touches were fleeting, because Dean forgot how to be gentle in that year he was in Purgatory, and Sam just couldn’t fuck his brother like a stranger. Sam can’t believe it, but just like that, it’s been years since he’s been allowed to kiss the places Dean hides from the world. Sometimes Sam will stare at Dean from across the table in the library and just think at him, think at that furrow in his brother’s brow, _Remember when I gave you purpose, and you gave me a home?_

But Dean isn’t a mind reader, so Sam says nothing, because he is (like so many of his adversaries have pointed out) a coward. So he sits and waits for Dean to slip up, like a junkie, and he thanks god when he’s around every time his brother relapses. He is, most of the time, the cause of the relapse, and it’s that cyclical pattern of their lives that they can never escape, the ride he can never get off. 

“We’re human,” Dean murmurs finally, deciding to drop it for now. Sam can just tell by the set of his shoulders. “I wouldn’t be so fuckin’ tired if I wasn’t, that’s for sure.”

Sam clears his throat. His brother’s knee is pushed up against his thigh under the table, and he swears he can feel his pulse at the point of contact. He knows stopping this-- this _thing,_ whatever it is between them, hasn’t helped anything at all. In fact, it makes him more obsessed. More greedy for Dean’s time and attention and affection, since he can’t have his passion. It makes him think things like, like-- what if Dean dies out there, on some hunt, and he never gets to kiss him again? What if he never gets to swallow down the way his name tastes off his brother’s lips ever again? 

“Yeah,” Sam says eventually, pushing his seat back to stand. “I’m beat, man. I’m gonna go find a spare room to pass out in for a couple hours.”

Dean tips his head back, sipping at his whiskey. He offers a drink of it to Sam, who gulps down the three remaining fingers in one harsh gasp. Dean squawks, offended, but fuck, Sam needed that. Maybe he’ll actually get some sleep tonight. Dean makes a show of going over to the liquor cart and pouring Sam his own, and then refilling his. 

“Medicine,” Dean insists, handing it to Sam. “Why aren’t you crashing in your own bed? I know the mattress sucks, but--”

“Cas,” Sam shrugs. “Poor guy just kind of toppled over.” He takes a long swallow, feeling Dean’s eyes follow the burn down to his simmering, acidic stomach. Dean’s taking inventory (of what he can see, at least), noticing new cuts and bruises, the set of his shoulders to indicate any weakness in his foundation, but Sam lets him see nothing. Dean looks away, almost like he’s disappointed.

Sam clears his throat again, tipping his glass towards his brother. He swears, it’s like they’re playing a game of strip poker and no one wants to show their hand until they’re naked. He gives Dean a small smile, and then gestures toward the hallway. “So, I’m gonna just…”

“Yeah,” Dean says finally, backing away. “Yeah, go get some sleep. Get whatever peace you can, man. It might be the last time for a while.”

Sam hesitates in the threshold, because that almost sounded like an invitation. His heart beat ratchets up, and he almost looks behind him to Dean-- but at the last minute, he just squeezes his hand around the framing of the doorway and goes to find a place to bed down.

Ten minutes later, he’s washing his face in front of the sink, clad in just the yoga pants he stole from Canyon Valley Spa a couple years ago, turning his face this way and that in the mirror. Dean’s taken his inventory, but Sam still needs to do his own. Dean doesn’t know the extent of it, so--

A throat clears behind him, and he jumps, startled. He heard Dean’s bedroom door close from next door before he came to wash up (yeah, he chose the spare room next to his brother--sue him, okay? He still doesn’t like not being able to hear Dean breathing in the same room if he wakes up in the middle of the night), so he chalked it up to being wrong. It wasn’t an invitation-- it was a reminder. 

_We don’t get peace. We don’t get happiness._

That kind of thinking just makes Sam want to grapple for it even harder.

In the past, if Sam saw his brother leaning against the doorjamb like that, it would make all his systems go. Sam would move to him, after a minute, couldn’t let him see the eagerness, even though every bit of it would be evident in the way Sam touched him. He would wrap himself in his brother, in the intimacy, the pleasure.

“Sam,” Dean says eventually, startling him. They’ve just been staring at each other in Sam’s reflection for the last however many seconds, and that embarrasses the hell out of him. Thirty-two years old, and still watching his brother like (as his dad so eloquently put it once) Dean is the only color in a world of black and white. Dean sounds tired, resigned, like he knows a big fight is just minutes away, and Sam closes his eyes against it. Not tonight. Please, god, not tonight. 

“Dean, I can’t,” he answers, gripping the sink. “I can’t. The day I’ve had, the--” His head drops forward, between his shoulders, like his strings were cut. Then he straightens up, turns to his brother, chest, eyes, heart, everything bare. Proffering, almost. Like this is all Sam’s got, and he knows it’s not much, but he hopes Dean knows that whatever little he’s got left, he can have. If only he’d ask. 

“I was infected,” he says instead, meeting Dean’s eyes from across the locker room. Dean’s eyes dart up to his, and then down his chest, and all at once his still life brother is in motion, striding towards him. “Was, Dean-- was. I found, I found a cure--” He sways a little, black creeping along the edge of his vision, and he hears Dean say his name, but it’s far away. “I did it,” he says, smiling. Dean barely reaches him before he collapses. 

When he comes to, he doesn’t want to open his eyes because he immediately, intimately knows where he is. He’s in Dean’s bed, and Sam is so warm, but there’s something even warmer and solid pressed up against his side. His spine melts when the hand in his hair moves, and Dean’s nails scratch along his scalp. 

Dean knows he’s awake, but he’s letting him come to on his own. Giving him a moment, giving him this closeness, like it’s part of the cure. Sam hasn’t felt so clear, so alive in his own skin like this for… for way too fucking long. Who knows. Maybe it is part of the cure. His brother’s love has always been enough. No reason to think it isn't now. 

Eyes still closed, he nuzzles his way into burying his face into the warm, solid thing pressed against him. The light from the lamp is bothering him, and he gives a pitiful moan. The weight against him moves, and he groans again, a definite protest-- but then the light clicks off, and he sighs, thankful. He knows it’s Dean he’s up against, knows he’s cuddling his brother, pressing his face against his solid, bare chest. But he also knows Dean is letting him, and he’s not gonna examine why too closely. He’d rather just be thankful. 

He hums low in his throat when Dean gently starts combing through the tangled gnarls in Sam’s air-dried hair. He works through each knot efficiently, but gently, every bit as tender as he was as a child with a comb and determination. Every tug on Sam’s scalp melts his bones a little more, and he’s so out of it, flying high. He remembers Cas having to touch Bobby’s soul once, to power up. It feels like that’s what he’s doing now; the closer he gets to Dean, the closer he gets back to himself. 

Sam is breathing a damp spot against Dean’s tattoo, and he hears the little hitches in his breath every time Dean’s touch hurts him so good. He distantly recognizes he’s hard, but it’s not urgent. It just… is. It’s a symptom of this sick disease, the real thing he could never rip out or scrub clean. 

A particularly stubborn knot has him slipping out a moan into Dean’s skin, and everything goes still. Sam is flushing, but he doesn’t move-- if Dean lets go now, Sam will crumble at his foundations. 

“God, Sam,” Dean breathes finally, the first words spoken here, between them. “D-don’t. Lemme just-- take care of you, okay? Okay, Sammy?”

Sam’s nodding against Dean’s chest, the point of his nose dragging against his brother’s sternum. He doesn’t know what Dean’s asking, but he can have it. Whatever he wants, he can have. Dean backs away, and the sound Sam lets slip-- like a dog yelping high in its throat when someone accidentally stands on their foot, it breaks something between them. Something that wasn’t even fixed anyway. 

Dean brings his touch back, though, and that’s all that matters to Sam right now. He rolls Sam onto his back, hovering over him, propped up on his elbow. His other hand does a sweep, an inch or two above Sam’s skin, raking the tease of warmth all down his torso. He shivers, and he feels his nipples go tight. 

Dean groans, and in the span of a second, drops down to bury his teeth into Sam’s neck. It startles Sam so much, the sudden and instant reminder that Dean knows every turn to his crank, that he swears he almost comes. His hips jerk, and his hands fly to Dean’s hair, pressing him harder into the bite. He wants it to bruise, wants to feel it for days, see it for weeks. Use him like a chew toy and spit him out. 

“You have no idea,” Dean rasps finally, his voice matching how strung out Sam feels. “No idea, how beautiful you are. Always so fuckin' beautiful. No idea how much I want you like this, how much it kills me. To-- to not touch you. To not be with you like this.” Sam jerks as Dean rakes his teeth over the imprint they left behind. “But right now, I need you to be still. So I can look at you, okay?”

Sam nods so fervently, Dean chuckles deep in his throat. It breaks a small smile out of Sam, too, because he’s desperate, and he doesn’t care who knows it. He knows what Dean ‘looking at him’ entails. They’d fucked many-a-time after a close call, and Dean always called it the same thing-- looking at him. 

Dean pants against his neck for a couple beats, showing his hand for a second, that he’s every bit as desperate as Sam. Then his mouth is trailing down, his nighttime-pink lips ghosting against the skin that covered those nasty black veins, only hours earlier. Like Dean knows exactly where they were, and he’s determined to chase every inch of that map with his tongue. He catches a nipple between his teeth, and Sam’s back arcs off the bed, still holding onto Dean’s hair like that alone will compel him to stay anchored there, make Sam sore and puffy for days. He doesn’t disappoint; his hand coming to the one his mouth vacates, the shock of cold air and the harsh twist between thick fingers has Sam all but grinding his hips into the air. 

Dean covers his body in one fluid motion, knees dug into either side of Sam’s hips, elbows planted above Sam’s shoulders, bracing against his forearms. He looks into Sam’s face, looks and looks. At the same time Dean finally seals that mouth over his, he also dives under Sam’s yoga pants to stroke him firmly, once, and Sam comes, nearly screaming into Dean’s mouth from the unexpected shock of pleasure.

“Dean,” Sam sobs, his tongue unable to stop darting out for tastes of his brother’s mouth. It reminds him of how he felt about demon blood-- if it was in front of him, he was gonna take until he was full. And he was so hungry, is still so hungry. 

He’s shaking apart, screwing his hips up and back, riding out the most intense, hair-triggered orgasm of his life. Dean’s mouth is everything it used to be, and now it’s even more-- it’s not just home, it’s the home he’s ached for, over long stretches of barren highway, the home he never thought he could return to. But suddenly he’s here, and. 

“I missed you,” he whispers in that tiny space between their mouths when they part to breathe, and their lips barely unstick, tacky against each other. He’s still crying, still shaking a little, but it’s okay, it’s okay, Dean’s got him. He’s kissing him like maybe Sam’s the home Dean never thought he’d see again, too. “God, Dean, I missed you so much--”

“Fuck, Sammy,” he breathes finally, looking down at Sam like all the world could fit into one body. “You don’t even know how much I-- god, you don’t know.” He takes a hold of Sam’s hair again, and Sam drives his chin up to meet him halfway, reattaching their hungry mouths. “I wanna--wanna get inside this gorgeous body, I--”

Sam pants, _“yes,”_ and their arms knock together as they both dart for the nightstand drawer at the same time. Dean smiles down at him, just enough of his inherent sweetness that it makes Sam relax back down into Dean’s mattress. Maybe, by morning, it will remember him. 

Dean snags it, then dives back into their kiss like no time passed, tongue searching every corner of Sam’s mouth for the taste. Then Dean’s mouth is gone, and Sam's yoga pants are sliding down his legs. He hears them hit the floor, and then Dean's jeans, but he doesn’t open his eyes-- he lets Dean look at him however he wants, for just a minute, without having to guard his expression. He knows how big this feels to him. It must feel big to Dean. 

Sam’s knees are suddenly at his ears as Dean presses his thighs back, causing a deep stretch in his hamstrings. He barely has time to process it before he’s throwing his head back, deep into the pillow, shocky little bursts of sound leaving his swollen, tender mouth. Dean’s tongue is writing amazing things into Sam, punctuating with soft sucks against his hole. He’s absolutely writhing under his brother’s mouth, blood racing hot through his body. No one has touched him here since Dean, and he is being so thorough, like he’s making sure the place is just how he left it. He feels his lower body relax, and his hole pouts against the merciless flickering of Dean’s tongue. Dean makes a satisfied sound, vibrating right up against him, and then Sam has two fingers inside him, cool and slick, his body taking them right in and holding them there. 

“Fuck,” he pants. “Jesus, Dean.” He’s working his hips in time with his brother’s searching fingers.

“God, you still open up so pretty for me, little brother,” he murmurs right against Sam’s asscheek, watching his fingers disappear inside. “Does it feel good?”

Sam’s cock hasn’t been this hard in fucking years, and it bobs and drools every time Dean’s fingers spark against his prostate. “Yeah, yeah,” he moans, hiking his hips. He licks his dry mouth, clenching down on Dean’s fingers just to remind him he can. “S’good, Dean. S’good. I want--c’mon.” 

Dean’s mouth finds his again, and Sam moans for it. Honestly, he could come like this, maybe even without Dean touching his dick-- he’s done it before. Only a couple times, but still, this feels like that kind of night. But he pulls his fingers out, and Sam only just stops himself from whining because he knows he’ll like what Dean brings back even better. 

Dean braces himself on his forearms, searching Sam’s eyes. Dean's are wide-open and wet, the dewy green that always reminds Sam of mornings, of second chances. He takes Sam’s hand in his, and together they trail down Sam’s sweaty torso, his breath heaving out of him. He’d almost forgotten, how they-- how they start. He doesn’t know how he forgot; this is his favorite part, it always had been. Maybe he had to forget, in order to let this go. Trust Dean to remember for him.

Both their fingers play against Sam for a minute, dipping in and out of his hole, like they’re testing his readiness. The pressure is exquisite, and Sam clenches his eyes shut as he feels Dean’s cock bumping up against their knuckles. Sam takes him in his hand, stroking him deeply, and Dean shudders above him.

“Thas’it,” Dean all but slurs, his lips pressed against Sam’s cheekbone. “Get me in there, Sammy.” 

Their hands join over Dean’s cock, grasping at the thickness before Sam tips it down and presses it against his hole. They both go still, and Dean bites out his name. Sam bears down and spreads his fingers, so the pointer and middle form a V over where Dean is sinking inside him, slowly. It feels like Dean is carving in against thousands of pounds of pressure-- they truly have to work to get him inside, a lot like the first time. Except Sam doesn’t lose his erection, and Dean doesn’t ask him a million times if he’s okay. He just keeps pressing soft kisses against Sam’s face, the fingers wrapped around his dick tangling with the fingers Sam still has pressed against where they’re joined, and they’re both panting and sweaty by the time Dean bottoms out. 

Dean moans, low but reckless with his want, and he pulls out slowly, turning Sam inside out. He’s biting his lips so hard they’re bleeding, and Sam wants that, too. All of it, one hundred percent of him, every dark, dirty taste of his brother. When he pushes back in this time, he gets up on his knees, braces his hand against Sam’s thigh, and says, “I’m gonna come so fuckin’ fast it’s embarrassing.”

Sam groans for that, propping himself up on his elbows. “I want it, Dean, I want it. Give it to me--” He all but yelps, dropping back down, when Dean starts a punishing rhythm. The burn inside him is the best thing he’s felt in god knows how long, Dean just laying him out, giving him no choice but to take it. The incessant snap of Dean’s hips bruising the soft skin of his inner thighs, the hand in Sam’s hair, pulling and tugging and anchoring, and finally, the callused hand jerking Sam’s cock in time with his being pounded into the mattress--

He comes even harder this time, hands smacking flat against the bed as Dean drills him even harder. Sam just opens for it, his whole body relaxing, sounds being ripped from him he’s never heard himself make before. He opens his eyes, stares baldly into Dean’s as he digs his nails into stripes down his brother’s back. Dean howls, the sudden pain snapping him out of that pre-orgasm limbo, and the next thing Sam is aware of is a cool cloth wiping him down. 

“Hey,” he croaks, his voice absolutely shot. He shifts uncomfortably as Dean mops them up best he can, save for a shower. But they’re both definitely done for the night, so sponge-bath it is. 

Dean’s eyes snap back to his, and he’s a little pale under the flush still on his cheek, down his chest. “Hey.” He says it like he wants to get comfortable, but is a little afraid to. Once bitten, twice shy-- that’s Dean Winchester for you. 

Okay, look. A couple years ago, Sam said something unkind that he meant at the time, but not in the grand scheme of things. Since then, he’s tortured and killed to find the demon and destroyed the world to keep the man, but Dean is still unsure if Sam wants this. Sam’s okay with spelling it out, though. 

“Dean, I-- I’ve been pretty lost without this.” Sam reaches out for his brother, and without a second of hesitation, Dean allows himself to be pulled down into Sam’s arms. He feels Dean let out a huge sigh against his chest, then his body relaxes, like it’s just that easy to suddenly have this again. 

“I didn’t think to ask for it, Sammy,” Dean admits finally, pressing a kiss just above Sam’s sore nipple. “I thought about it-- you, us, _whatever_ , every day. But I didn’t think it was an option, so I…” Sam feels more than sees Dean shrug. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Sam tells him. “We can talk it to death, or not. I want this, Dean. I have always wanted this, ever since I knew what wanting was. I’m always going to want this. Want you, like this.” He swallows around what he wants to say next, but then decides, fuck it. Tonight is a night for miracles, it seems. “Love you, like this. Love you in every way, for a million different reasons, but especially like this. Because this is mine, just mine.” He whispers it, like maybe it’ll pack less of a punch. 

Dean draws back to look at him, really look at him. “You swear you’re all right, Sam? Swear to me, right now.”

Sam nods. “As far as I know, yeah. I swear, I’ll tell you all about it in the morning. But I’m okay.” He traces a thumb down Dean’s cheek, and Dean closes his eyes to feel it. Sam had forgotten Dean does that. It seems like Sam’s forgotten a couple really important details, but he’s certain he’ll have time to recover those memories.

Dean turns Sam onto his side, and then, for lack of a better term, snuggles up behind him. He puts his snuffling nose against Sam’s ear and into his hair, and it makes Sam smile against a few blinked-back tears. Dean’s arm comes across his waist, tucking his hand up under Sam’s body so that he’s really holding him, not just resting against him. 

“Sam?” Dean whispers just before Sam drops into sleep.

“Hmm?” he wonders, knowing he’s about to put in double digit hours of sleep. 

“If…” He starts, his breath warm against the bruise that’s been pulsing like a heartbeat this entire time. “That means this is mine, right?” He tightens his arm around Sam’s middle, like he’s trying to get up under Sam’s skin and live there. If only he knew that he already does. “Only mine?” 

Sam only has time to press his mouth against fingers that trace them before he’s asleep. When he wakes up in the middle of the night, he can hear Dean’s steady breathing in the room, feel the rise and fall of his chest against Sam’s back.

He goes back to sleep, at peace.


End file.
